Laughter

My father may have given me my name
but it’s my mother,
who’d taught me how to laugh.

It all started after my sister’s birth.
My father’d had a vasectomy.
three years later
after my sister’s 3rd birthday,
I was conceived..
As the months passed,
my mother thought she was getting fat.
She started exercising,
began yoga.
None of it helped.
She just got fatter.

Five months later,
when spring was in full bloom,
the doctor told her.
I was there,
the miracle,
god’s baby
in her belly
forming.

She walked out of the clinic,
laughing
The laughter echoed
down into the womb
vibrated the cavern.

I absorbed it.

Even today
as I lie in bed
inside a burned-out Print Shop
listening to the cars drive by
there’s a deep bellowing laughter
coming from me
echoing off the bare soot stained walls.
The squirrel outside my window
stops on the branch,
and gazes at me.
I don’t even know why I am laughing;
it just seems funny
in a silly way.
Maybe I am crazy,.
At least I can laugh about it.